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what did you do as child that would be considered dangerous today? (1 Viewer)

LOCO

Footballguy
I would ride my bike behind the mosquito truck and my mom would say. “Hey don’t do that you might get run over”

 
When I was 9 and my brothers 12 and 13 we would bus downtown to see movies on the weekend. Can't picture my nieces/nephews allowed to transit around.

 
Virtually everything it feels like....

-latchkey kid at 9

-from ages 9/10 though 16 was out on bikes with friends going anywhere we wanted, no phones or way for parents to get ahold of us. Only curfews as a way for them to know when we’d be back.  

- won’t even attempt to list all the stupid things we did at those ages, the list would be pages but will list one particularly stupid thing we did. We use to soak tennis balls in gasoline then light them on fire and play soccer with them in our cul-de-sac.  How I survived my childhood I’ll never know. LOL

 
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Used to explore the storm drains under the streets.  you could take them all over the city.  Sometimes they were big enough to ride your bike through....sometimes you had to crawl on your belly to get through.

Rode bikes all over town to go to friends houses.  This included going down steep hills and flying through neighborhood intersections without knowing if cars were coming or not.

Played 1-pump BB gun wars.  Some would pump more than once "by accident".

 
Virtually everything it feels like....

-latchkey kid at 9

-from ages 9/10 though 16 was out on bikes with friends going anywhere we wanted, no phones or way for parents to get ahold of us. Only curfews as a way for them to know when we’d be back.  

- won’t even attempt to list all the stupid things we did at those ages, the list would be pages but will list one particularly stupid thing we did. We use to soak tennis balls in gasoline then light them on fire and play soccer with them in our cul-de-sac.  How I survived my childhood I’ll never know. LOL
Ditto.  Summers involved taking off on the bike in the morning.  Coming home at dark.  Crossing 6 lane busy highways.  Riding through the woods with no idea exactly where we were.  I don't know how my parents would have even ever found out what happened to me if we didn't make it back.  Can't imagine letting my kid do that in elementary school.

 
- riding in the back of my uncle's pickup truck on ol' Gramp's farm, sitting on the rim

- birchbending

- playing some very dramatic games of "escaped prisoner" across the roofs of all the abandoned buildings in my hood

- taking the subway to Fenway from age 10. oddly, me Ma would usually walk me to the station

 
Used to explore the storm drains under the streets.  you could take them all over the city.  Sometimes they were big enough to ride your bike through....sometimes you had to crawl on your belly to get through.

Rode bikes all over town to go to friends houses.  This included going down steep hills and flying through neighborhood intersections without knowing if cars were coming or not.

Played 1-pump BB gun wars.  Some would pump more than once "by accident".
We used to play American Gladiator with the BB gun. Set the obstacle course up. Got dinged in the head a few times. 

 
I was a pyro, so lot’s of stuff.

Used to spray tennis balls with WD40 or lighter fluid light them on fire and then kick them or hit with a golf club, was like a flying comet.

Used to scrape all the gun powder out of whistler bottle rockets and make a big pile of it, then put a loose fuse, light and watch it explode.

 
Just riding my bike all over town with my friends.   Staying out till the street light came on.  Leaving home in the AM in the summer and not returning home to dark.  No cell phones, just be on the porch by dark.     Building tree houses.  Making forts with old wood and nails.  Stashing pron in said fort.   Drinking old found whiskey in decanters . https://www.tias.com/stores/silsnw/pictures/brewste42a.jpg

chewing tobacco at same fort and throwing up.      Turning green and getting dizzy.       All that was a fun filled Saturday back in the day.

 
Used to spray tennis balls with WD40 or lighter fluid light them on fire and then kick them or hit with a golf club, was like a flying comet.
This is what we loaded into the Polish Cannon. Could fire those things 2 blocks, and we would turn the cannon on each other. One time I got hit from 16ft away right between the eyes. Had PENN tattooed on my forehead for a few weeks.

 
What is this one?
Pretty much the potato gun predecessor.

Back when there was still steel soda cans, cut the top and bottom out of 6-7 cans, except the bottom can, that one you would only cut out the top and drill two small holes opposite each other at the bottom. Duct tape them together, put a tennis ball in the cannon, squirt lighter fluid in one of the holes at the bottom, roll it around to dissipate, then light it. BOOM! We could fire that ball 2 blocks sometimes.

 
I was a pyro, so lot’s of stuff.

Used to spray tennis balls with WD40 or lighter fluid light them on fire and then kick them or hit with a golf club, was like a flying comet.

Used to scrape all the gun powder out of whistler bottle rockets and make a big pile of it, then put a loose fuse, light and watch it explode.
We use to collect all the tumble weeds we could and pack them into the cemented water outlet on the Santa Ana River and torch those suckers with a can of raid blow torch. And then scurry across the field and hop the fence back into our yards with the HB police helicopter was in sight. 

 
Pretty much the potato gun predecessor.

Back when there was still steel soda cans, cut the top and bottom out of 6-7 cans, except the bottom can, that one you would only cut out the top and drill two small holes opposite each other at the bottom. Duct tape them together, put a tennis ball in the cannon, squirt lighter fluid in one of the holes at the bottom, roll it around to dissipate, then light it. BOOM! We could fire that ball 2 blocks sometimes.
We used tennis ball cans

 
We used tennis ball cans
When I got the ball off the melon, the blast was so big it blew the cannon apart and right out of my cousins hands, the ball bounced off my grape, over the house and over the street and I saw stars.

A story that will live in infamy as I was across from my cousin attempting to catch the tennis ball with my baseball glove across a 16' pool.

ETA: Alcohol might have been involved.

 
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We lived on a cal-de-sac until i was 12 or so. Over the last few years we began playing a game in which one person was in the middle with a ball - don't recall what, but bigger and more dense than a volleyball. The rest of us rode our bikes around that circle and the objecrive was to hurl that ball hard enough to knock us bike riders over. If you fell over you were relegated to the middle. And you wanted to spend as little time in the middle as possible because whoever spent the most time ponied up for everyone when the ice cream truck rolled around. So those balls being hurled were missles. 

 
My 10-speed had no brakes, so I would use the bottom of my sneaker.  A few times my foot would get stuck in the tire, and it was always a bad wipe out.

This one I swear is real, even though it sounds fake - my moped used to go about 27 MPH, but it had no handlebars.  I would hold the throttle cable in my hand and lean as needed.

 
As a teenager I flagged for my crop dusting uncle.  Sat on four-wheeler and moved forward 22 feet (if memory serves) to line up his bi-plane for the next pass.  Just me, my Marlboros, and paraquat.  ... and a world class tan thanks to my unfamiliarity with sunscreen.

 
As a teenager I flagged for my crop dusting uncle.  Sat on four-wheeler and moved forward 22 feet (if memory serves) to line up his bi-plane for the next pass.  Just me, my Marlboros, and paraquat.  ... and a world class tan thanks to my unfamiliarity with sunscreen.
Used to be a lady out here who did that. She carried an umbrella and whatever they were spraying rained down over her but she was protected by this umbrella. I always wondered what kind of cancer that caused.

 
Pretty much from the age of 12 I would have free reign.  Would bike all over town, often miles away to go to one of the public pools or Putt-Putt.  Parents had a rough idea of what I was doing but never all the details.  
 

 
Bottle rocket fights, pellet gun sniper while friends playing basketball, Jarts with sharpened tips, riding around on the bumper of UPS/Ice Cream trucks, going into weird neighborhood lady’s house to buy candy, exploring the ruins of a failed apartment complex with security guards and dogs, and oh so many more.

 
We Rode in smoky car, rode in back of pickup truck, station wagon no seat belt. In restaurants with smoke, walked home from school bus 1 mile by myself, went far into the woods by myself, gave high fives and shook peoples hands. 

 
As a caveat, it was considered dangerous back then too, also everything. Lots of playing with fire, damaging "safe" fireworks so they were not longer safe (aka blowing up roadkill with piccolo pete bombs), making bows and arrows and shooting reeds at each other that went fast enough to leave a good sized bruise when hit, grabbing on to a passing car when on a bike or skateboard or roller skates, mixing all the random chemicals I would find in my parents garage and then "inject" snails or plants with it using a dart. I am sure there is significantly more that is slipping my mind. 

 
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We used to ride Tonka trucks down the street/hill next to our house.  Sometimes we would even have someone watch for cars at the bottom. 

A lot of skin was lost on that hill.  

Also backyard wrestling matches with all the neighborhood kids.  That ended when one kid snapped my older sister's ankle. 

Good times. 

 

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